Exonians Raise $2500 in Suicide Prevention Walk

Over the past week, the Exeter community raised about $2500 for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and sent 46 Exonians to Portsmouth to participate in AFPS’s “Out of the Darkness” Walk on Sunday. This far exceeded ESSO’s original goal to bring 20 participants and to raise $200. To organize Exeter’s involvement in this event and raise money, upper Ashley Baxter worked with ESSO’s Active Minds club. The entire Portsmouth walk was also a success for AFSP; they raised $77600 which soared above their goal of $50000.Baxter, immediately after coming back to Exeter this fall, approached ESSO in the hope of creating a team for the Exeter community to participate in Portsmouth’s “Out of the Darkness” Walk. She wanted to raise awareness for a cause that meant a lot to her. Her proposal was well received by the ESSO leaders and Active Minds co-heads, seniors Connor Bloom and Rachel Sachs.“As suicide awareness and prevention is such an important issue to address as a community, and September is Active Minds' national suicide prevention month, Connor and I decided over the summer that we were going to plan an event as a club,” Sachs said. “We found [the walk] to be just what Active Minds was hoping to do.”Although ESSO usually does not allow students to fundraise, because it undermines the organization’s value of offering hands-on support and direct communication to help others, Elizabeth Reyes, ESSO’s community service coordinator, felt it was an appropriate time to give special attention to this cause at PEA. As a result, Active Minds and Baxter started to raise money by selling purple bracelets in Agora all week and encouraging individual donations.The money that the PEA community raised from selling bracelets in Agora and other donations under the Phillips Exeter team online on afps.org will go straight to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. AFSP is able to use an impressive 82 percent of the money they receive from donations to go straight towards the services they provide such as suicide and support hotlines and the Out of the Darkness walks around the nation.Baxter said that the AFSP will effectively utilize the funds raised. “I had a lot of people asking me like ‘what's the point?’ and ‘where does this money go?’ and as of right now, the only thing we can do is raise awareness," she said. "There’s no way to donate money to fix the problem like donating to help starving kids - that’s not how suicide prevention works. But the AFSP raises awareness and I hope that that’s what we did on this campus.”After a week full of planning and fundraising, Exonians travelled to Portsmouth on a beautiful, sunny day to walk with 600 other people for the same cause.While some students had personal reasons for walking, others participated to support the cause and their friends. Regardless of their motivation, the group spent a morning full of unity, support and awareness.Lower Hannah Piette decided to support the charity in memory of her uncle who committed suicide almost two years ago. She said that the walk enabled her to share and express her loss through action.

“Suicide prevention is something very close to my heart and walking for my uncle and everyone else lost to depression was very gratifying.”

“My family and I are still dealing with the loss. It's hard to find closure when someone's death could have been prevented,” Piette said. “Suicide prevention is something very close to my heart and walking for my uncle and everyone else lost to depression was very gratifying.”After losing her 20 year old brother, Trey Malone, to suicide two years ago, senior Callan Malone also participated in the walk for personal reasons. Malone hoped to commemorate and fundraise for him in the best way she could. While there, friends and new acquaintances with similar stories supported her.“It was an emotional experience being surrounded by so many people who have lost friends and family to suicide. I have never experienced anything like it,” Malone said.“I have always felt alone in the struggle to grieve and live with such a loss, but seeing so many families who were walking in memory of lost loved ones gave me a new perspective as well as an understanding that there is a giant network of people always willing to to reach out in order to reduce the amount of suicides in the US.”Suicide, to many, is a sensitive subject, and not often discussed. The quietness of the subject does not, however, reflect the number of individuals who have been affected by it. The walk successfully raised its participants’ awareness of these issues, and upper Jeff Mellen was astounded by what he realized.“Sometimes things like suicide can seem like anomalies that could never happen near you, but it really put some perspective on how many people are affected by it just in New Hampshire alone,” Mellen said.“So many people in America, including, unfortunately, many people at this school, are affected by suicide annually and it's something that I wanted to do my part in by raising money for it and awareness so that it doesn't have to always be that way.”Overall, the walk and the fundraising were incredibly successful for the Exeter community. Students and faculty benefited greatly from the welcoming community and helping raise awareness for a cause important to them and their community, and beat ESSO’s expectations. Many students there were personally thanked by AFPS volunteers for their support and proactivity.“That felt good,” Baxter said. “It was nice to know that we can find a positive and productive thing to do with the community out of such a devastating event.”Reyes was very impressed by Exeter’s passion and hard work to put this special event together.“There was a lot of energy and planning that went into this event and Ashley Baxter and Active Minds should be very proud of themselves for making this happen along with every student who participated in some way,” she said.“Not everyone could participate for many different reasons, yet some donated to the group and others sent their friends onto the bus with a hug or had a hug waiting when they returned to campus. This was a community wide effort.”